The pregnant who want to proceed with an abortion should first be informed “in a clear way” by their obstetrician about “vital functions of the fetus,” according to an amendment to the law published late Monday night in its Government Gazette Hungary.
The amendment changes the conditions necessary for an abortion in this EU member state, where termination of pregnancy has been legal since the 1950s – in most cases, up to the 12th week of pregnancy.
The decree, signed by Interior Minister Sandor Pinter, will come into effect on Thursday and marks a tightening of the rules.
The opposition, far-right party Mi Hazank, which has been calling for this change, expressed its satisfaction with a statement claiming that “moms will hear the fetus’s heartbeat from now on“, although the text of the law does not explicitly mention such a thing.
Amnesty International, for its part, spoke of a “worrying setback”
“For at least a few seconds, the unborn child will be able to hear the mother before it becomes the abortion”, MP Dora Duro also claimed in a Facebook post. The law, revised in 1992, “is not set in stone,” he continued, thanking pro-life organizations for their support. “We are making history!”, he added.
Amnesty International, for its part, spoke of a “worrying setback”. This decision, taken “without any consultation”, will make access to abortion more difficult and “it will cause even more trauma to women who are already facing a difficult situation“, said the representative of the non-governmental organization, Aron Demeter.
In the new Constitution of Ukraine, which came into force in 2012, it is stated that the country defends “the life of the fetus from its conception”. A few months earlier, Viktor Orbán’s government funded an anti-abortion campaign using European funds, drawing the ire of the European Commission.
Source: News Beast
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